The game requires the player to search out a space fortress looking for ten hostages. Presented in a top-down view, the player can only see the area immediately around them, so the entire base has to be searched room by room. There is a 60 minute time limit on the mission.

Rescue at Rigel was soon followed by Star Warrior, and the two rebranded to be part of their "Starquest" series, although Star Warrior used a more heavily modified game engine than Rigel.

Players take on the role of adventurer Sudden Smith. Smith must try to rescue captives from the interior of an asteroid orbiting the starRigel. Players have 60 minutes to rescue 10 human captives from the alien moon base. They must first find the captives before delivering them to the rescue ship (via a transport beam).

Players must defeat or avoid the enemies wandering the base: the alien Tollahs, two types of armed robots, a six-legged "cerbanth", and a huge amoebicslug. As players forge deeper into the alien stronghold, they have the opportunity to acquire better weapons.

The playfield is presented as a top-down view of the current location of the hero. The game is turn-based, with the player given a certain number of "points" to spend on various actions, completing their turn when the points ran out. Rescue at Rigel is very similar to Temple of Apshai, a popular dungeon crawl by Epyx, part of their "Dunjonquest" series. Rescue at Rigel had a timer similar to The Datestones of Ryn, an earlier Dunjonquest game.

Rescue at Rigel used the concept of providing room descriptions similar to those used in some Dunjonquest games, but instead of unique descriptions for numbered rooms, the game had multiple rooms labeled "Sanctum", for example, and a detailed description of what typical Sanctums contained was provided in the manual along with about a dozen other room types.

Bruce F. Webster reviewed Rescue at Rigel in The Space Gamer No. 34.[1] Webster commented that "if you've got the money and the interest, buy it. In fact, if you've only got either the money or the interest, buy it - you'll be glad you did."[1]

Jerry Pournelle reported in BYTE in 1983 that Rescue at Rigel was one of several Epyx games his sons enjoyed playing.[2]